RSS

If you die before Nov. 3, does your vote count?

Generally speaking, it depends on your state’s election laws, and those laws vary. At least two states, South Dakota and Wisconsin, require you to be alive on Election Day for your vote to count. Florida, by law, does not. Ohio, in practice, does not. In addition, there are all sorts of odd twists on this.

Let’s say you voted early at the polls and got killed on your way home. Does your vote still count? Sure, even if state law requires you to be alive on election day, and someone notifies the election office that you’re now dead, because there’s no way of separating your vote from all the others cast at that polling place.

If you vote by mail, on the other hand, it’s theoretically possible to intercept a dead person’s ballot, but only up to the time it’s separated from the return envelope with the voter’s name (and signature) on it. Election laws in exactly four states — Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — prohibit processing ballots before Election Day; all the rest of the states do, to varying degrees (see chart here).

Let’s say you have Covid-19, you’re in a hospital, on a ventilator, and filling out and signing your mail ballot is your last act on this earth. Will it be counted? No, if (1) you live in a state that requires you to be alive on Election Day, (2) someone notifies the election office of your death, and (3) it’s identifiable, i.e., hasn’t been separated from the outer mailing envelope with your name on it.

And then you get situations like this:

“In 2008, 88-year-old Florence Steen, who was born before women had the right to vote, cast her absentee ballot for Hillary Clinton on the South Dakota primary. But she died before Election Day, and because of state law, her vote was discounted. President Barack Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, also voted by absentee ballot for the 2008 general election. She also died before Election Day, but her vote was counted—not because of state law in Hawaii, which is actually similar to South Dakota’s, but because Hawaii required official confirmation by the state’s Department of Health that she was dead, and such confirmation could not be produced in the two days between her death and Election Day.”

(Source: here)

The bottom line is: Of the 2020 key battleground states, mailed ballots of voters who die before Nov. 3 won’t be counted in Wisconsin or Pennsylvania if their deaths are reported before Nov. 3, otherwise they will, but will be counted in Florida and Ohio even if election officials become aware the voters have died before their mail ballots are processed.

Given how confusing the issue is, it was inevitable that some enterprising law student would write a paper about it, and someone did (here).

Photo: These Wisconsin voters unfortunately became ineligible while waiting in line to vote.

Return to The-Ave.US Home Page


Comments are closed.